Inglourious Nights In Cookie Booths

by Caren Crane

I did two of my favorite things on Saturday: worked a Girl Scout cookie booth and watched a movie. These things may seem to have nothing in common and at least one of them may seem a bit...er...questionable in its entertainment value. I contend they are but two sides of the same coin. The coin being, of course, human nature.

First, the cookie booth. Setting: the sidewalk next to the entrance to a popular grocery store chain catering to people who like to spend (in my opinion) too much money for food. The clientele here tends to be more upscale, picky and - I'll be honest - unsociable than at other area grocery stores. However, we tend to sell lots of cookies at these stores, so the cookie booth spaces are much in demand and we were thrilled to be there. Saturday, the high was about 36 degrees F, but it felt about 10 degrees colder. Our booth was in the late afternoon/early evening, so it was about 33 degrees and felt about 24 degrees. It was COLD.

Cold is good when you're selling cookies. So is rain and high wind. People feel sorry for the girls and you get more sympathy buys. IF the people will make eye contact. Most do, some don't. Some pretend not to speak English. Some said they already had plenty at home, which is nice...except the cookies haven't come in yet. We got some early for Super Bowl weekend, but they won't be delivered to folks who ordered until next week. Yes, friends, these people lied to our faces. We expect that, because we hear the same things every year. I always find it fascinating to watch people react - or try hard not to - when confronted with lovely young women peddling a product they don't care to buy. What to do? Avoid eye contact? Feign no knowledge of English? Lie? As a writer, I study these reactions and file away the facial expressions, the body language, for future use. Oh, yes, it will appear in a book someday. *g*

Next, the movie. Actually, this is a two-parter. On Friday, we got Nights In Rodanthe from Netflix. I'm not going to start a Nicholas Sparks fight, but let's just say I found it more than a tad ridiculous from a got-things-in-the-Outerbanks-all-wrong perspective and hilariously over-the-top from a let's-randomly-kill-off-a-major-character perspective. I loathed it. My younger daughter loathed it. My husband disliked it. I may have indulged in a bit of a rant about my displeasure with the film. My husband witnessed this.

On Saturday, we watched Inglourious Basterds, a Quentin Tarantino film. It was completely ridiculous from a got-things-completely-all-wrong perspective and hilariously over-the-top from a let's-kill-everyone-off perspective. I loved it. My older daughter loved it. My husband LOATHED it. Further, he took exception to the fact that we enjoyed it so much and indulged in a prolonged rant about it.

So, if both films were ridiculous and over-the-top, why did I love one and loathe the other? I think it's because when I sit down to watch a Quentin Tarantino film, I expect it to be ridiculous, hilarious, bloody and most certainly over-the-top. I enjoy that ride and expect Tarantino to take me there. My assumption, because it's my point of view (the only one I know) is that most people would enjoy that ride, but I know some people don't.

When I sit down to watch a movie based on a Nicholas Sparks novel, I expect it to have an incredibly sappy storyline and I expect him to kill off a major character at the end for no apparent reason whatsoever. That is the ride Nicholas Sparks takes people on. I HATE that ride. But, as my husband pointed out, apparently many people enjoy that ride and keep signing up for it. Let it be known that my younger daughter put that movie in HER Netflix queue and it was not, in any way, a selection of mine.

I am fascinated by the fact that people love that ride. I don't understand that love, but I know it exists. I want to interview some people who enjoy the sappy set-up followed by crushing heartache and ask them why that's fun. I've heard people say, "Well, that's more realistic." Maybe for them, but not for me. I have never fallen in love with a man who said all the right things and was incredibly noble to boot. I also have never had the one true love I knew for four days (or two weeks) die tragically before we ever got to spend any time together. So...maybe I'm missing the entertainment part.

In Caren world: Tarantino - ridiculous and fun; Sparks - ridiculous and depressing.





My husband is still angry with me for not agreeing that I should loathe Tarantino and his ridiculous handling of WWII in the way I loathe Sparks and his ridiculous inclusion of wild ponies in Rodanthe. The difference is, Tarantino knows that everyone knows Hitler did not die in a cinema in Paris. But I think Sparks just figures 99 percent of people reading his books or watching the movie won't know there are no wild ponies in Rodanthe. They are on Shackleford Banks (an island) and Ocracoke Island and I don't think the ponies took a ferry over and trotted up Highway 12!

So, human nature. Are you able to forgive the ridiculous and over-the-top and simply enjoy it when the creator is in on the joke? Can you enjoy it when you feel the creator is simply hoping you don't know any better? Do you make excuses instead of simply saying, "No, thank you" to people selling things? Do you feel guilty for saying no? I am an avid student of human nature, and I want to know what makes you tick!Source URL: http://idontwanttobeanythingotherthanme.blogspot.com/search/label/human%20behavior
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Truck Nuts

by Cassondra Murray


Can any of y’all explain this to me?

I am a country girl. I like trucks.

In fact, my first ever new car was a pickup truck. Gray Mazda. I loved her. Still do. Poor thing is down with brake trouble and has over 350,000 miles on her and still, I’m not giving her up. She’s out beside the driveway. Her paint is faded and she’s got a few rust spots, but I will get her fixed.

See there? My truck is a female. I know this. I can’t tell you how I know, but I do.




I just know. We call her the Wonder Truck.

Most of our cars have names, and, usually, gender, and I’ve noticed that we’re not alone. Lots of folks name their cars. Casper is a white SUV, named after the Friendly Ghost. Flower is a black and gold Prizm with a purple flower spray painted on the hood (Don’t ask. It’s a long story.). I have a friend whose SUV is named Vader. I once knew a car named Daisy.

Even my mechanic knows our cars by name. “You bringin’ Casper in to get the belts changed next week or not?”



I’ve called him for help before. “I’m stuck on Nashville Road. Flower won’t start. Can you come get me?” He did. I think he feels obligated. After all, he made Flower out of two other cars. That makes him..well…kinda like her dad, doesn’t it?

I have now asked a bunch of people whether their vehicle is a boy or a girl. To a one, they answered with a minimum of consideration. “Oh, my car is a girl,” one of my friends said. “When she goes in for a tire rotation and balance I tell her I’m taking her for her mani-pedi.” Alllllrightythen.

The interesting thing is that as many of the men I questioned had “girl” cars as “boy” cars, and women had equal numbers of “boy” cars as “girl” cars. It doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the size or shape of the car, or the size or shape of the owner, though I think some cars might lend themselves toward one gender over the other. For instance, this car on the right I think is sort of a "boy" looking car. But the Hello Kitty car below, not so much.





Strange, isn’t it? Giving our cars names? Endowing them with sentience? I’m not sure when this started. Maybe with Herbie the Love Bug. ( I’m old enough to remember the original Herbie). There was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, who definitely had personality. Pixar released a film called Cars—and all of them have personalities.

We humans spend ton-o-bucks on these machines, we spend scads of time in them, and I guess they become extensions of us. Part of it is image I suppose. Right now I’m conflicted. I'm driving a minivan. I actually love my van. It hauls big dog crates and lots of gear for search and rescue, its comfortable, gets great gas mileage, and thus far I’ve proven to be nearly invisible to law enforcement.

But I don’t like minivans. I don’t like the way they look, and I don’t like the “soccer mom” image because I’m not one. I’m not a mom. See there? I have this need for my car to be an extension of me—of the persona in which I see myself. I’ve tried to come up with ways to de-momify the minivan. The best suggestion thus far has been to add a machine gun turret to the roof.

Like it or not, cars do get personified by their owners. When I trade cars I have a sense of loss—as though I’m saying goodbye to a friend—one who’s traveled with me through ups and downs, both physical and emotional. After all, I’ve spent years singing along to the radio, laughing, crying, and having fights with my husband in my car.

But never, not even once in my lifetime, have I felt the need to prove my car’s gender by attaching plastic or chrome genitalia to it. This I do not understand.

I knew Truck Nuts existed, but I’d never SEEN any until a few days ago and all of a sudden, there they were, on a big white dually turning left in front of me. And lemme tell ya, they were hangin' low. So low that they were dragging the asphalt as he made the turn. All I could do was grit my teeth and say “Ooooowwwwwwww! Dang, that’s gotta burn!”

Truck nuts come in all colors, which seems appropriate. If you’re going to do something as asinine as chaining fake testicles to your automobile, at least have the class to make them match, ya know? Purely for research, I said to my husband, “If I bought a set of white truck nuts for Casper, would you put them on him?”

Him(frowing): “No.”

Me: “Why not?”

Him: “I just wouldn’t!”

Me(waving arms): “WHY NOT?”

Him (frustrated): “Its…just…not….ME…to put truck nuts on my vehicle. I’d rather have little bitty Special Forces Stickers and if you know what they mean you get it and if you don’t know what they mean, you don’t need to know.”

Me(arms crossed, lips pushed out in consideration): “Okay then.”

Since then I’ve done a bit of research and Googled a fair number of images and sources. I found out that you can get Truck Nuts that light up bright red when you brake. Or you can get multi-function ones. When you're turning right, the right one flashes, left, the left one flashes and so on and so forth. They glow white for backing up. Hey, why not?
But I have noticed that most folks who endow their vehicles have those appendages waaaaay too far to the rear. Take that photo of the red truck at the top of the blog as an example. They're just plain too far back. That’s another thing about growing up on a farm. I have a good sense of where they ought to be.
If a truck were to actually be…well…sentient, and actually have said…accessories….they’d be just south of the rear wheels in the area of the spare tire. Not hanging out there on the trailer hitch in front of God and everybody.

It’s the writer in me I suppose. I just can’t seem to let go of this.

Oh. Bad choice of words maybe.

When I see strange behavior, I want to know why. Why is that person doing that? How can I write characters that are real if I can't figure out real people?

A few years ago I was on I-65, driving to Nashville one morning for work. A monster-sized flatbed tractor-trailer was in front of me. Ginormous chains ran from the corners of the huge (mostly empty) flat trailer into the center, where they secured an eensy teensy Tonka toy bulldozer. The driver had switched out the signs on the front and back of the truck to say “Undersize Load.” I laughed out loud. That truck driver took his valuable time and set that up after his last delivery, expressly to make other people smile as they drove by him on the Interstate. THAT I can appreciate.

But this whole Truck Nuts phenomenon—I don’t quite get it. Do you suppose this is the same thing? Is it a joke? Am I missing something here?



I recognize that there are certain vehicles that may suffer from sexual identity crises. But do you think some folks actually need to validate the gender of their vehicles?

What do you think, Bandita Buddies?

Do you own an automobile?

Is it a boy or a girl?

Does it have a name?

Does your significant other have Truck Nuts attached to his or her vehicle? Hey, some girls have them too! Indeed they do. A fair number of ladies have trucks that are boys and they have the appropriate parts to prove it!

Have you ever seen a set of Truck Nuts in real life? What was your reaction? If you’re a female, would you go on a date with a man in a truck which was…obviously a boy?

If you’re a guy, would you put them on your truck?

For those NOT in the States, are Truck Nuts purely an American phenomenon? Or have they spread to where you are yet?


And you might as well weigh in on which is in better taste--Matching or contrasting colors?Source URL: http://idontwanttobeanythingotherthanme.blogspot.com/search/label/human%20behavior
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